The thing is, the doors were open that morning.

Val knows—­she knows, she knows—­that waking up to find both doors of their sagging cabin opened wide to the world is probably only because Dad wasn’t sleeping well, and that she should tie a bell to his foot before bed tonight. Just in case.

But.

An open door is an invitation, she whispers to herself. And she keeps the doors to their cabin firmly closed all the time. She’ll have one of the ranch hands rig up some sort of lock system, up high, where Dad won’t be able to reach it.

That’ll fix it. She can stop worrying.

She doesn’t, though. She worries through the morning riding lessons, worries through lunch with the camp full of awkwardly pubescing little delights, worries through the early-­afternoon group activities, more riding, cleanup. All her favorite things—­especially the cleanup, knowing parents are paying a small fortune so their daughters can spend the week doing the chores Val hates most—­are eaten up by the worry.

By late afternoon she’s mostly shaken it off, though. Sometimes an open door is just an open door. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

One of the girls, Lola, freckled and sunburned and wonderful, raises her hand. “Miss Val?”

“You know where the bathroom is,” Val answers. “You don’t have to ask when you need to go.” It’s almost time for pickup, which means she needs to get Poppy from the goat pen. The other five dusty and happy and tired campers are here with Val, finishing up in the stables.

“No!” Lola giggles shyly. “It’s not that. Do you have any kids?” An image flashes in Val’s mind. A girl, even younger than these, her brown hair forever fighting to escape messy pigtails, with eyes so blue they break her heart. Val smiles. “Not yet, but I know there’s one in my future.”

“How?” another camper, Hannah, asks, wrinkling her nose beneath smudged glasses. Val resists the impulse to clean them for her. Independence is part of what her camps promise, even if it means dirty glasses. Val’s been running the summer programs for Gloria’s Ranch since she was twenty, and they’re the absolute highlight of her whole year.

Val shrugs. “I’ve always known.”

“But aren’t you getting too old?”

Val lifts an eyebrow. Lola scowls and elbows Hannah, but Val shakes her head. “No, it’s okay to ask questions. Questions are how we get to know the world. And the answer is, I’m not too old. Not yet.”

Her heart ticks like a clock, but she still has time. Val’s belief in her blue-­eyed girl is as solid as her belief in gravity. The when and the how are questions she doesn’t let herself ask. It’s easy not to ask questions. Take the question, put it behind a door. Close the door. Leave nothing open. She is aware of the hypocrisy of always encouraging her students to ask questions when she denies herself the same freedom, but there’s a whole door in her head just for the cognitive dissonance of Do what I say, not what I do.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Lola blurts out, and suddenly this interrogation makes sense. Lola’s father finds excuses to linger at every drop-­off and pickup.

“Only when I want to,” Val answers. “Sometimes I have a girlfriend.” Though boyfriend and girlfriend are generous terms for the relationships she allows herself to have. Still, her answer has the desired effect of rapidly changing the subject as all the girls’ eyes go wide. Val can see the follow-­up questions bubbling, but they don’t have time. She has to get to Poppy before—­